#leviathan falls

[jademaomi]

amos burton would've power-walked straight through omelas and smashed up that dungeon like the kool-aid man

[unfairunknown]

Been thinking about Amos Burton (again) and the ending of the Expanse book series and I still feel distinctly...unsettled? By it. Like for so many of the characters (Holden primarily) it felt like an inevitable ending, and I guess Amos's path made more sense for him than anyone else...

But then I'm thinking about characters like Drummer, Bobbie, and Naomi and how their pain and trauma didn't feel, to me, justifiably resolved in the way Holden and Amos were (and Alex, too, with his actual happy ending). And maybe Holden was meant to be THE protagonist, and that the ultimate tragedy and unknowability of life on the galactic scale is meaning enough. ..(I like, for example, that Naomi never learns her son is alive after all because that wasn't the point of Filip's arc)

But the choices of what happens to which characters are not random, they're contrived by the creator, in this case, two men writing under the pen name James SA Corey.

I THINK I liked the ending of the series, and I'm certainly still thinking about it almost a month after finally completing it, but I'm unsure exactly where my discomfort or lack of satisfaction is stemming from...simply the void of feeling from reaching the end of a 4000+ page series? Something deeper?

These musings are brought to you by a continued love for Wes Chatham (he is forever my Amos Burton), and excitement over the forthcoming game Osiris Reborn, which takes place up until Caliban's War supposedly.

[patrickbrianmooney]

I think about all the things we could have done, all the miracles we could have achieved, if we were all just a little bit better than it turns out we are.

James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Falls, ch. 35

[cannoli-reader]

So, I just finished Chapter Thirty in Leviathan Falls, and it was weird and interesting how I reacted to the end of it.

I like Elvi. I sympathize with her, and I did not at all condemn her work. Even after what Fayez showed Jim in a prior chapter about the origin of their catalyst. Morally, ethically, I don't find it any different from using a corpse for research (Cortazar, Ochida et al and their involvement in that origin, OTOH, I would compare to the murderers of said analogic corpse).

And Amos is Amos. Amos is cool. And it's always gratifying when he terrorizes someone for a good cause.

So, I appreciate, on more than one level, Elvi's fear reaction. Buuuuut, it's completely weird to me. Because my visceral reaction to even an implicit threat (and many kinds of compulsion or forbiddance) is "Fuck you, watch this," so I'm pretty sure I would not have been as calm and (relatively) cool-headed as she was.

And then there is the other level, where Amos is Amos. And this deep into the story, I know that it's not really a threat from him, or even what most people would call a warning, or a promise of consequences. He was just stating a fact. And that comes to the other part of my reaction when putting myself in Elvi's shoes. Which is gratitude. Because it that context, what Amos told her was not a warning or a threat, it was a bolt of moral clarity. I've only had an experience a couple times in my life like that, where someone very effectively made it clear where a moral line was. I am talking an absolute moral line, not someone laying out the boundaries of their own conscience or the dictates of their ideological code. And my feeling has always been profound unspeakable gratitude. I've never been in a position like Elvi where my potential moral lapse was on a life and death scale, but I also like to think I would feel really good about the circumstances whereby if such a moment of clarity came, knowing that it did not depend on the other person's ability to impart the clarification to me, but that he possessed the will and ability to make the right thing happen.

It's more than the relief that you have just avoided going over a cliff, it's encountering someone standing guard on the precipice and knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that no one is going over it.

And then I think of Amos' conversation with Miller about his shooting Dresden, about his own moral compass. Boy's come a long way.

If, of course, it's actually Amos.

Like The Investigator in Abaddon's Gate &/or Cibola Burn wasn't really Miller, but I don't think this is quite the same thing.

[luulapants]

Undead Amos Burton surfing online forums about how to take care of a dog on a spaceship so Teresa can keep Muskrat with her... in another life you would be a mommy blogger

[bereft-of-frogs]

I was inoculated from having any lukewarm ‘but Carol should just stop whining and join the hivemind, the hivemind seems nice’ takes by the hivemind chapters of Leviathan Falls, thank you James SA Corey

[downbadfordraper]

Finished Leviathan Falls last night, which is the last book in the Expanse series. Gonna let that sit for a while. Write some fic. Feel some feelings. Lie on the floor for a bit, maybe.

[youwontbelievethethingsiveread]

Tell me Holden is feeling bad and broken and needs to work through some things without telling me so